“Let me assume you know very little about Florence, for starters,” said Steve Strimer, a local historian who proceeded to lead a walk that stopped at the houses of freed slaves, Utopian thinkers and people who sheltered fugitive slaves as part of the Underground Railroad.

“Florence is one of the most important sites in New England for understanding and interpreting the African-American community,” Strimer said.

Although it is now predominantly white, the Florence section of Northampton had a higher percentage of black residents in the 1850s than Springfield or Boston, according to Strimer’s research. Prominent abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Lydia Maria Child lived in the area, and many of them were active in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a Utopian community that advocated the equality of the races and genders.

“This is where Truth and Douglass first met,” said Strimer, citing the two giants of that era. “Their sense of each other as a foil begins here in a way.”

Starting at the Thomas Jay Warren statue of Sojourner Truth unveiled at Pine and Park streets in 2002, the walk took participants in a circuit that included Maple, West Center and Nonotuck streets. The crowd included a score of students from several schools who were taking the tour for extra credit. Among them was high school sophomore Emma Narkewicz, who was accompanied by her father, Mayor David Narkewicz.

“She wanted to do it,” said the mayor, who had seen some of the sites before and has taken part in a similar tour Strimer gives of downtown Northampton.

Adam Cohen, who was carrying his 21-month-old son Shane on his back, proclaimed the event “fabulous.”

“It’s a great presentation of our history,” he said.

Even Florence residents such as Ellen Darabi had their eyes opened on the tour.

“I’ve been here ten years and I never realized there was so much history,” she said.

Tom Weiner, who emphasizes social justice to his sixth graders at the Smith College Campus School, wanted them to see how its roots go back to 19th century Florence. New York City resident Natalie Petersson, who was in Northampton with her husband and eight-year-old twins visiting in-laws, said she was both surprised and pleased by what she learned on the tour.

“I didn’t realize Florence played such a huge role,” she said.

Even Smith College professor Jonathan Gosnell, who attended the event with his wife and two children, was impressed by Florence’s extensive African-American background.